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Something out of a nightmare

by Karoli on April 17, 2007

Blogged by an AOL employee who went to school with Cho Seung-hui, who has been identified as the shooter at Virginia Tech yesterday.

After hearing about the mass shootings, I sent one of my friends a Facebook message asking him if he knew anything about Seung Cho and if he could have been involved. He replied: “dude that’s EXACTLY what I was thinking! No, I haven’t heard anything, but seriously, that was the first thing I thought when I heard he was Asian.”

While I “knew” Cho, I always wished there was something I could do for him, but I couldn’t think of anything. As far as notifying authorities, there isn’t (to my knowledge) any system set up that lets people say “Hey! This guy has some issues! Maybe you should look into this guy!” If there were, I definitely would have tried to get the kid some help. I think that could have had a good chance of averting yesterday’s tragedy more than anything.

There are links to two plays that Cho wrote for a playwriting class on this blog post as well. I read them — they were angry but not to the point where I would have associated them with someone who could do this. Mostly they were superficial with dialogue that was unnaturally peppered with profanity and exclamation points.

I am posting this because what bothers me most, beyond the obvious tragedy, is that mental health issues are such an important piece of this story. I am not saying that anyone failed to intervene with Cho, but I am wondering if our abysmal mental health system in this country contributed to the evil he wrought yesterday.

To me, this is the biggest question. Will we come to a point where mental illness is given the same weight as physical illness in terms of importance and attention?

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  • Doug,

    And tonight we hear that Cho was deemed 'mentally ill' and was released to outpatient treatment. This is the problem with the whole system -- Cho was MILD compared to some who are released to outpatient treatment. Why? Because mental health services are systematically stripped from the state and federal budget, so there's no opportunity to monitor and/or stabilize them.
  • Corretion to prior post -- it now appears Cho declined counseling services. Quote from his professor, Lucinda Roy: "I kept saying please go to counseling, I will take you to counseling, because he was so depressed.... I was told [by counseling] that you can't force anybody to go over ... so their hands were tied, too."

    Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18155081/
  • The teacher who was interviewed by CNN and other sources have said that Cho was referred to mental health services and (I believe) that he did go at some point. (She also says she addressed the issue with the administration and that there was not enough in the writings to take any administrative action. She also says she tutored him for a year.)

    Without knowing what services Cho undertook and how, there is no way to know if those services failed him. Under existing law, there is no way the two writings posted on AOL, at least, would allow any administrative action beyond the attempts that those in the department apparently undertook. And... in our society, as incredibly tragic as the events and circumstances are, I don't think we want a situation where more compulsory action can be taken based upon troubled writing of this nature.
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